How to make a video of recorded movements on a QTVR Panoramic photograph using Pano2Movie.

This blog post is about a useful software tool that I use from time to time which may be of use to panoramic photographers.

The purpose of the Pano2Movie software is simple, it will create a video file based on the recording of movement of a QTVR panorama.

So why would you want that?, well this is very useful if you want to create a DVD showcasing your VR Photography, you can record some nice pans using your portfolio of work and then create a regular DVD from the video files. The app has other uses too such as..
I will be using this software quite a bit in my next youtube video about Dovedale. I visited Dovedale to take lots and lots of 360x180 degree VR photographs but also took a few short HD video clips, but looking through the videos now I wish I had taken more video sequences, but not to worry as I have lots of VR photographs which can be made to look like live pans by using this software.

The software is fully working for 30 days so you can try before you buy.
Get Pano2Movie from here (PC and MAC versions available):

http://www.pano2movie.com/

If you find the software useful then its worth investing in it, This costs around £39 (price depending on exchange rate at the time of purchase).

How to use the software

I will assume that you already have a QTVR panorama (.MOV file).
Personally I use PTGui to stitch my shots together then use Pano2VR to create my QTVRs using the Add "Quicktime" button in Pano2VR.

Anyway first download the Pano2Movie software, this is downloaded as a zip file so you will need to extract the files (right click, extract all if using XP/Vista/Windows7)

The software does not require installing, you run it by simply double clicking on the exe file. So obviously if you intend to use the software often then its worth moving the files to a safe place on your hard disk such as C:\Program Files\Pano2Movie\   then creating a shortcut icon on your desktop to to exe file.

When you run Pano2Movie you are presented with the main panel you can see in my screenshot.

Now goto the File dropdown menu and select Load QTVR. Find your .MOV file (Quicktime Panorama) and load it in. This should then show in the preview window.

Click on the Dimensions selection and pick the size you want to record to. This will be the size that the video will be recorded in. In my example here I have selected "1280 x 720 -HD" as I want to use the video on Youtube in HD mode.

Now select the Frame Rate that you want to use, this will depend on what you are going to do with the final video, in my example I will be importing the video file in Sony Vegas 9 Pro and mixing it with HD video clips that are recorded at 29.97FPS.

The next thing you need to do is have an idea of what sort of movement you are planning on capturing to video. The viewer behaves exactly the same as viewing your panorama in Quicktime player. So you can try moving around and zooming.

Once you are ready to record get the start view how you want it and click the Record button. Note that even though you have clicked the record button its not actually recording anything at alll until you move the view. If you want the final video to have a few seconds of static view before moving the scene then you can alter this using the timeline controls at the end.

Now move, Pan and zoom the view in the way you want it, all of your movements will be recorded. As you move around you will see the Duration counter increase, this is the amount of playback seconds captured.

When you have finished with panning click on the Record button again to stop recording.
On the timeline at the bottom you will see curves for P/T/F (in other words Pan, Tilt and Field of view/Zoom). You can use the many controls on this timeline to change the recorded movement to get it just how you want it.

Remember at this stage all the software has done is capture a sequence of numbers that relate to your Pan Tilt and Field of View movements, no video has been generated yet.

To see how your video will look you can click the Preview button, this will playback your movements in the window so you can get an idea of how its going to look.

If you are happy with your recording click on the Export button, the software will start the conversion process by creating a sequence of frames (.jpg or .png images.)

There is a progress bar showing the conversion progress, be aware that this can take some time if you have selected large dimensions and its a long recording.

Selecting "high quality (but slow)" in the export preferences panel increases the conversion time three fold.

Once its generated the image sequence (when the progress bar is at 50%) it then creates the video file by sequencing these frames, this part of the conversion process is faster than the first stage of conversion.

Once its completed this, it will purge the image sequence from the folder and create a video file. The default video file format will be a .MOV file but you can specify all manner of video formats including H624, just create a profile using the settings in the export panel.

Now you have your video file you can play it using Windows Media Player or Quicktime Player if you have generated a .MOV file.

When you play it back, it should replicate the exact movements that you recorded in Pano2Movie.

You can now import this video file into your video editing software for whatever purpose you need it for, for example using Roxio 2010 Pro DVD creator to make it into a DVD.

In my case I will be importing the video clip along with many other panned Pano2Movie recordings into Sony Vegas 9 Pro so I can intersperse the recorded pans with real HD video footage to make a complete HD movie for Youtube.




Hope you found this software utility review of use.

Andy